Project Descriptions

Grand Prize

To ensure safety and efficiency in the densely populated air space over Europe, the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation has requested more precise take off scheduling from the continent\u2019s airports. At Arlanda, Stockholm\u2019s international airport, the air traffic controllers were using old systems requiring a lot of manual work. This resulted in airplanes having to wait in taxi lines and not taking off as scheduled, meaning longer waiting times for passengers and tons of wasted fuel. Our task was to create an entirely new Departure Sequencing Tool to increase efficiency.

Extreme safety demands and carefully established routines make the air traffic controllers quite cautious when it comes to change, so we knew we had to include them in every step of the process. A new system was collaboratively developed and regularly tested with real-time simulated data. Evaluations were done in the Arlanda control tower to check readability, colors, whether touchscreens would work or not, and how well the new user interface works with the other systems. By layering information based on importance we reduced clutter by 2/3. Predefined, carefully selected functions add fast ways to plan or add events like snow sweeping and departure frequency. Any manual change automatically reschedules upcoming departures or moves the traffic to alternate runways and communicates this to the airline handling agents, pilots and other personnel.

The result is a new type of intelligent system that allows airplanes to drive straight from their parking spots to the runway for take-off, eliminating long taxi lines. Error margins have decreased from 10 to 5 minutes when making departure prognoses, which helps to streamline the efficiency of international flights. A one-minute reduction of engine time per aircraft will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 2 million tons a year, and comfort for passengers has increased because of a significantly shortened time between boarding and take-off.

Gold Prize

“Assembly require” is a phrase that can trigger feelings of intimidation, fear, and frustration – sometimes all at once. With the exception of a few gifted individuals who love to assemble products (and who therefore become their family and friends’ go-to person for any variety of DIY projects), most people do not enjoy reading cryptic instruction manuals that may as well be written in another language.

BILT is an app that re-imagines the “assembly required” experience for both consumers and manufacturers. Assembling something with BILT is like having an expert by your side. An interactive 3D model of your product lets you see exactly what you’re doing; and audio-guided instructions tell you what to do step by step. Each step in the instructions features a simple animation showing all the pieces come together. You can zoom in to see any details, rotate to get the angle just right, and walk through the assembly process at your own pace. Compared with paper instructions or even YouTube videos, people using BILT make significantly fewer errors. This means happier consumers and fewer costly returns for the manufacturer – it’s a win-win.

With BILT, manufacturers get far more insight into the people who are actually buying their products. We make registering a product so quick and easy – a simple click instead of dreaded paperwork – that people are much more likely to follow through. This allows manufacturers to connect and build relationships with their consumers that were never possible before. Not to mention, consumers who use BILT feel a profound sense of accomplishment by successfully assembling something on their own, which means they are more likely to promote a manufacturer’s brand to their friends and family.

BILT is currently available for phones and tablets running iOS or Android.

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Gold Prize

Made by Many: Hackaball, Most Engaging UX for Digital Education

Hackaball

Hackaball is a “computer you can throw” that allows children to program their own games.

Computer-related employment is expected to rise by 22% by 2020. This year, England became the first country to make computer programming a compulsory school subject, and in the U.S., organizations are lobbying for programming to be available to students in every school.

Our objective was to design a device that would encourage even the youngest children to learn necessary skills that will better prepare them for an ever-more tech-focused world.

Hackaball is a smart and responsive smartphone-connected gadget designed to teach 6-10 year olds the principles of coding through fun, physical and mental play. The ball is paired with an iOS application that lets children create their own games and program them onto the device as well as play the classics. Sensors inside the sturdy Hackaball encourage kids to experiment with sound, light, vibration and movement. The potential for creating games is as limitless as a child’s imagination.

We launched the Hackaball funding campaign on Kickstarter this spring with a goal of raising $100,000 for product development. Hackaball quickly caught the attention and captured the imagination of the public, and we met our objective in 17 days. As a result, we doubled our goal, and made that, too: Within one month, we raised $241,122. The first Hackaballs will be shipped in time for the 2015 holiday season for $85.00.

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Gold Prize

Method created a tool that allows designers a mechanism to tighten the design process loop.

Smart devices have created new problems for designers to solve, and at Method there has been a growing need for physical products to be able to communicate independently of screens. As a Lead Interaction Designer at Method, Daniel Nacamuli has been looking for ways to enhance the design process by creating tools to control physical and digital design patterns in real time. From this starting point developed what became the physical product Henri (Hardware Enhancing a Natural Responsive Interface) and the workshop experience, creating languages for objects and removing the noise of interactions.

Henri is a sound and light emitting device whose behaviors can easily be created, recorded, and played back using a mixture of physical and digital interfaces. The physical interfaces free designers from thinking about code, therefore encouraging them to focus on the interaction capabilities of the tool. Henri was intentionally designed to encourage collaboration by allowing multiple behaviors to be controlled by a number of people at once.

Henri was unveiled as part of a workshop in February this year at San Francisco’s IxDA15 Conference, where attendees were paired in teams and asked to program light and sound patterns on the tool. Most participants had never thought of infusing personas into an object. They began to think from a unique perspective where the product needs to communicate more information to a person than just on, off or idle. What if it was angry, sad, or excited? Henri allows those concepts to be tested real-time, and enhance the overall capabilities of both the designer and the product. It helped people literally think outside of the box, and feel productive while playing.

Method is currently developing a workshop for middle school children to expose them to the intersection of design and technology at an early age.

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Silver Prize

The Village of Useful: My Big Tomorrow Silver Prize, Most Inspirational UX for Educational Advancement

My Big Tomorrow

My Big Tomorrow is a resource designed to help young Australians realise bigger life choices.

The purpose of My Big Tomorrow is to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of 15 and 16 year old Australian high school students from low socio-economic backgrounds. The ultimate goal is to help them graduate from University. The initiative is sponsored by the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

After extensive consultation with high school students, we determined that there was a lack of useful resources available to help them understand career choices. This is a problem Australia-wide. My Big Tomorrow was created to fill that void with inspiration, information and education. It is also designed to give them an understanding of the skills they will need in order to succeed in their chosen career.

Our mission was to create Australia’s first useful careers website. The strategy was to connect with students around their interests and open their minds by showing a ‘day in the life’ of careers they probably haven’t heard of. The target audience is 15 and 16 year old Australians, nation- wide. While the project’s focus is helping high school students from low socio-economic backgrounds, we broadened the audience to create the first useful careers websites for high school students Australia-wide.

Silver Prize

NailSnaps disrupts the messy, toxic nail industry with the world’s best way to create, share, and wear custom nail art.NailSnaps empowers creativity and disrupts the messy, toxic world of nail polish with a better way to create, share, and wear nail art.Nail art has exploded into mainstream demand due to social sharing – it’s one of the top 5 most shared items on Instagram and Pinterest with 8.5 billion dollars a year spent on nails. Yet keeping up with this trend can be challenging. A basic salon mani averages $20, but custom art on each finger can cost more than $50. Do-it-yourself techniques are cheaper but they’re also messy and require a lot of skill. So for most people, personalized nail art is an aspiration rather than reality – until now.NailSnaps is designed for the hundreds of millions of women who want the convenience of nail wraps without giving up the creative freedom to make their own custom nail designs. The free mobile app empowers women to easily create custom nail designs from any photo using a patent pending, rotatable, resizable hand-pose stencil. We print and ship custom design as 20 nail wraps: 2 full sets of 10 directly to the customer for just $19. The made-to-order wraps can be applied at home in minutes with a just a simple nail file. Application is as easy as placing a sticker and filing off the excess. A perfect, totally custom manicure. No mess. No toxicity. No dry time.NailSnaps offers limitless creative expression by revolutionizing the way nail designs are created and applied. People are no longer limited by the number of colors they own or their ability to paint with tiny brushes. Nailsnaps revolutionizes nail design and makes the whole world your manicure.

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Silver Prize

Work & Co.: A Reimagined Digital Platform for the Metropolitan Opera, Best Digital Brand Expression

A Reimagined Digital Platform for the Metropolitan Opera

The Met Opera partnered with us to revitalize an art form.

Since opening its doors in the late 1800s, the Metropolitan Opera has been one of the country’s leading cultural institutions. Despite working hard to innovate, The Met still faces a crucial challenge: how to make opera relevant to younger audiences. Work & Co was engaged in 2015 to reimagine the Met’s digital presence. The goal was to revitalize an artform by creating a new platform that works across all devices to increase ticket sales and create a new generation of opera fans.

We started by conducting field work with various user groups, to understand their domain and how they discovered, selected and viewed opera performances. The goal was to revitalize an art form. Using an iterative design approach with weekly prototype builds, we worked closely with the Met to streamline their business around ticketing. The ticket workflow was simplified so that could be purchased on any page using an intuitive event calendar. Users get a sneak peek at views from a selected seat to spark anticipation ahead of a show. Donations and giving are integrated at natural points in the user’s path.

Inspired by the opera house, the new design uses black and white contrast to add both drama and utility. Like the front of house, white is used for informational sections of the site, while black is used for “lights-down” immersive experiences. To enable associative browsing, the design switches to simple, full screen text lists paired with a one-of-a-kind, editorial-style production page. To showcase the Met’s rich content, we developed an digital On-Demand platform, with access to the full historical archive of performances. It features a custom video designed and built specifically to provide an immersive experience with Opera.

Bronze Prize

The Cardboard Design Lab teaches design principles for virtual reality to anyone with a smartphone and a Cardboard VR viewer.

The Cardboard Design Lab is a mobile app that, when paired with a Cardboard or other smartphone virtual reality (VR) viewer, demonstrates and validates design principles in VR for the benefit of the entire VR community. It’s intended to accompany written best practices guidelines for the first generation of VR designers and developers. The app demonstrates and validates each guideline inside a VR world.

The Cardboard Design Lab is meant to be a jumping off point, a playground of examples to spur discussions between designers and developers. There are two sections. “Foundation” illustrates basic principles with concrete examples of good and suboptimal experiences (distances for text legibility, head tracking, motion). “Immersion” explores more advanced UX principles that help to sell the illusion of being in a different place with visual and audio examples brought to life in beautifully modeled, low-poly landscapes. The app is designed to be as immersive and interactive as VR itself. Showing, not telling, allows it to effectively demonstrate and teach the best practices we’ve learned as an industry so far.

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Bronze Prize

WAE: Creating an Effective Digital Service for Police and Public – The Metropolitan Police Mobility Project, Best Public Sector Service Design

Effective Digital Service for Police and Public – The Metropolitan Police Mobility Project

Implementing a customer-centred digital strategy, including redesigning and modernising how The Metropolitan Police reports crimes.

Leading global service design consultancy, WAE, delivers client transformation by putting customers at the heart of their clients’ businesses. Since 2013, WAE has worked with The Metropolitan Police (The Met) to develop and implement a customer-centred digital strategy. This includes developing strategic and tactical work that examines and designs new tools and channels of communication for both police officers and the public. Working in partnership with The Met Mobility team, WAE developed a pilot system to enhance three key areas of The Met’s Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS) using an iPad mini – enabling officers to quickly and efficiently report crimes and missing persons, collect evidence and record witness statements.

With a clear vision to minimise paperwork, improve the flow of information and help officers make urgent decisions, WAE implemented collaborative, user-centred methodologies to create an end-to-end mobile service. Workshops with Met stakeholders provided key insights to crystallise the vision, develop storyboards, design the interface and compile a best practice toolkit. WAE was able to plan the tactical integration of a mobile device to address some of CRIS’ user experience shortfalls with storyboards describing a future strategic vision of how a front-line officer would use an iPad mini on location.

Mobile CRIS and eStatements were the first two Apps to be provisioned to officers for Mobile use via iPad. A trial of the system ran in the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and the Mobility Pilot went live late July 2014. CRIS system now has more than 500 users and in the space of six months, 14,100 crime reports were created via iPad, more than 60,500 crime reports were retrieved to officers devices and in August 2015, 90.28% of crime reports created by ‘Response Officers’ were created using iPad. Since July 2014 there have been more than 17,500 eStatements produced and it counts with more than 500 users.

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Tim Hurles

Honorable Mention

SS+K: Moving Through Glass

Moving Through Glass

<>The first-ever augmented reality application providing round-the-clock aid for people living with Parkinson’s.

Mark Morris Dance Group and SS+K have created a wearable technology app which gives people living with Parkinson’s disease greater control and freedom in their daily lives. Created as a mobile supplement to the internationally-acclaimed Dance for PD® program developed by MMDG and Brooklyn Parkinson Group, Moving Through Glass was beta released to Dance for PD participants this Spring.

Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system, causes difficulties with movement and balance, including tremors, stiffness, and restricted range of motion. Over one million people suffer from Parkinson’s in the US, with over fifty thousand new cases diagnosed each year.

Built on Google’s Glass platform, the “Moving Through Glass” application utilizes heads-up display, bone-inductive audio, and verbal and gestural navigation to allow users with significant motor impairment to portably and fluidly access dance and music-based exercises as-needed to help them keep moving throughout their day.

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Honorable Mention

Method: Vivi Head Mounted Display System

Vivi Head Mounted Display System

An innovative head mounted display system helping monitor patient’s vital signs within a clinician’s field of view.

Bay Innovations, a healthcare startup focused on hardware for anesthetists, partnered with Method and GlobalLogic (Method’s parent company) to design and develop a head mounted display (HMD) system. Anesthesiology clinicians are responsible for keeping patients stable and safe during surgery, and the faster they respond to potential complications, the less impact there will be on the patient’s health. An HMD system can help by displaying a patient’s vital signs within a clinician’s field of view. Not only can this improve response effectiveness, but it also helps mitigate problems associated with an obstructed view of the patient monitor—allowing for more attention to be directed towards the patient and the surgical field. The result of the partnership was Vivi: a wireless HMD system developed by a multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers to help anesthetists monitor patient vital signs in the operating room.

In collaboration with GlobalLogic and consultant anesthetists from Bay Innovation, Method delivered an integrated design approach that was user-centered as well as technology and business focused. Through a process of prototyping, experimentation, user-interviews and human factors research the team quickly iterated towards software and hardware solutions that challenge the standard of glasses. A variety of tools and techniques were employed throughout the delivery process. GUI designs were sketched and implemented directly using custom software, and physical prototypes were created using everything from Lego to state-of-the-art CAD software and laser sintered polymer fabrication.

Within weeks the team engineered optics, electronics and firmware, developed a companion smartphone application, created unique device GUI, and provided industrial design and model making capability. The team developed a name, brand identity, and route to market strategy. The result: a turn-key invention and marketing solution that surpassed the partner’s expectations.

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Honorable Mention

SAP Labs: SAP Splash – Design Better Experiences

SAP Splash – Design Better Experiences

SAP Splash empowers business experts to design awesome business apps.

In the enterprise world, 70% of apps that are deployed are not adopted (per Forrester research) as they are difficult to use. The business experts or IT Specialists, who are busy shipping solutions, often end up putting together the user interfaces. While they’re experts in their business domains, they’re still novices in the design process. This mismatch unfortunately results in inefficiently functioning and crude looking business apps, which is a far cry from the consumer-grade user experience that people have come to expect.

SAP Splash makes it easy for business experts to create applications that make their end-users super happy. We provide a gallery of inspiration where they can simply pick a project, clone it, and then build upon the work already done. For those who want to really understand their users, we provide prototype and validation tools. This allows constant feedback making our users more mindful of their users. For business experts hungry for a deeper knowledge of design, we invite them to take advantage of our bite-sized learning material on design methods. We empower enterprises to scale design with the ability to create a private gallery of internal projects while leveraging their own design guidelines.

With Splash, business experts can use simple tools to create interactive prototypes with realistic sample data. More accurate user feedback can be captured to jumpstart their development process. Additionally, UIs that are inline with today’s best practices can be built and gracefully ease the business expert into the discipline of human centered design.

Our goal is to empower the business experts at enterprises to think like designers and be mindful of their users. With SAP Splash, we can all imagine a world where historically dull enterprise software becomes like consumer apps: simple, delightful and intuitive.

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Honorable Mention

Huge: A Mobile Makeover for Brazil’s Most Respected Newspaper

A Mobile Makeover for Brazil’s Most Respected Newspaper

Huge Rio develops the mobile experience for one of the leading and most respected Brazilian newspapers.

In the first semester of 2015, Huge Rio joined up with Estadão in order to develop the newspaper’s mobile website, bringing the best reading experience to the user. The project was aimed at maintaining the credibility of the newspaper while also satisfying the needs of readers, who are also looking for interesting news that they normally find on social networks.

One of the biggest challenges for the UX and design teams was to transfer the sensation of a printed newspaper to the mobile experience. To meet this demand, the team created the “Saiba Agora” section (similar to a “Trending Now” section), which acts as the newspaper cover and is constantly updated, and of course, with social share icons in order to encourage the sharing of trending news. Readers can choose the order in which they wish to see the content, selecting their favorite sections and creating their own identity. Another inspiration that came from the printed paper was the graphic design of Estadão, which was already considered one of the finest in Brazil and that is now reflected in the mobile website concept.

A first for Brazil, you can now see the comics from the printed version of the paper on the Estadão website, one of the most traditional and well-known sections of the paper. For the article page the main thinking was to bring the best reading experience, combined with subtle ads that don’t interrupt the flow of the reader. With the objective of maintaining people’s interest, articles with unrelated content appear at the side of the screen, so that readers can quickly jump to another subject.

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Honorable Mention

Comeet: Collaborative Recruiting

Comeet: Collaborative Recruiting

Comeet is a collaborative recruiting platform to streamline the hiring process and improve hiring outcomes.

Although >80% of people involved in recruiting don’t work in HR or have an HR title, existing recruiting software is designed solely for recruiters and not easily accessible to anyone outside the HR department. We identified an opportunity to build one system for everyone involved in recruiting; recruiters, as well as hiring managers, interviewers, coordinators, and executives.

After mapping each role’s objectives, needs, priorities, wish list, concerns and terminology, product design began in Sep. 2013. Instead of settling on imaginary personas, we worked closely with companies on wireframes and prototypes. We released our beta in October 2014, and the first commercial version in March 2015.

The key to making our enterprise software useful for people who typically use it infrequently was to create intuitive functionality based on familiar visual concepts and to provide tools and know-how to make employees better and more productive in their respective recruiting roles.

Game-like workflow based on tasks, transparency and accountability simplifies recruiting management. Drag-and-drop customization enables extensive customization options. Every step for every candidate is automatically associated with a team member and their to-do list so nothing falls through the cracks. Decisions are based on extensive feedback and information that is visually simplified, available in one place.

Making Comeet so visual at every stage, ranging from team and candidate photos, create a personable and engaging user experience very atypical of most B2B enterprise software.

People’s Choice

SAP Tennis Analytics, Overall Winner in Public Voting

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has changed the rule and permitted the coaches to bring a WTA-authorized mobile device onto the court. In a women’s professional tennis match which can last for hours, the players are allowed to consult their coaches for only 90 seconds during their designated breaks. This coach’s feedback is crucial, as it can change the tide of the match completely. Often times, players may not agree with the coaches’ observation and feedback, which intensifies the relationship and affects the performance. After all, coaches and players are human; sometimes what they perceive may not reflect what actually happened.

SAP Tennis Analytics provides insight to help players and coaches in real-time by translating data from the umpire’s scoring of the match and 10 on-court cameras into the tablet application. The coaches and players now have an objective tool that they can mutually trust; they no longer have to rely solely on the observation and manual data tracking. With real-time data provided to them at a glance, the coaches will have more time to focus on driving insights to their players more efficiently and effectively.

The design of the app has also taken into account different environments that the players and coaches face during the match—whether it is a low-light indoor match, or an outside where glare can immensely reduce the data legibility. Through settings, the screens and colors within the app will adapt to these changing light conditions, eliminate distractions, and optimize data legibility.

Graphic Mint’s UX Renovation of Zarion Allocate

The redesign of Zarion Allocate required Graphic Mint to take a useful but outdated tool and elevate it to an intelligent, relevant and modern standard. The project goals were to adapt to changing financial service processes, while also creating a level of user-centricity which had never before been achieved in work allocation software. The new Zarion Allocate is a product which gives financial service professionals pleasure to interact with and rely on. The project consisted of three key stages; User Research, Framework Design and Detail Design.

Our research team began by opening a revolving door of real user feedback. Through this, we learned that supervisors felt overworked and disconnected from their personnel, who sometimes felt undervalued and anonymous. In Framework Design we immersed ourselves in the supervisor’s ecosystem. We studied and visualised their environments, relationships, goals, workflows and the type of work items which are allocated on a day-to-day basis. In Detail Design, we created features which addressed user pain-points and humanised the product.

Dynamic information presented in the User Interface now gives supervisors full transparency of team operations. The introduction of profile pictures created game-changing empathy between supervisors and personnel, by simulating face-to-face interactions. This has humanised their professional relationship and tackled the anonymity of office environments. This enables them to make fairer, more democratic work allocation decisions. Control and ease-of-use has dramatically decreased the learning curve and established the trust users need to rely on the system as a valuable tool. The Zarion Allocate Marketing Team now find the product easier to demonstrate, as customers immediately recognise its value.

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People’s Choice Most Popular

Mobile Majority’s End-to-End Mobile Advertising Platform

Mobile Majority’s End-to-End Mobile Advertising Platform

The Mobile Majority builds the first vertically-integrated mobile advertising platform.

We are The Mobile Majority, a mobile advertising company based in Santa Monica, California. Our entry for this year’s UX Awards is the design and implementation of our mobile advertising platform, built in-house by a collaborative force of UX, Product and Engineering teams.

We began the development back in 2014, and since then have built a fully end-to-end mobile advertising platform that houses every component needed to run a successful mobile advertising campaign, from ad creation and delivery to targeting and measurement. During that time, we also built a full pattern library to maintain a unified approach and decrease future development time.

The mission of our platform, and The Mobile Majority as a whole, is to make mobile advertising better for brands. It’s a mission that was first identified and developed through our own experience working in the fragmented mobile ecosystem. Frankly, it’s too difficult to run a mobile campaign today with the existing technologies. There are too many vendors that must work together seamlessly. So we sought to create our own solution – our platform – that would make mobile advertising easy by focusing on user-centered design through one unified technology stack.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Best Student UX

Aibi: Anaphylaxis Prevention System for Children

Allergy alert system that helps children and school staff to better respond to allergic reactions and stop the potentially fatal onset.

Mild allergic reactions in children can become fatal quickly, and the unexpected triggers of allergies together with the complexity of school health services can hinder a timely medical response.

In the United States, every three minutes a child has an allergic reaction, and every six minutes a child is brought to an urgent care center in response to allergy-related anaphylaxis. According to The American Academy of Pediatrics, 1 out of every 12 children has a food allergy, and allergies are on the rise.

By helping children with allergies monitor their condition, and alerting the onset of an allergic reaction to caregivers, Aibi ensures a proper and timely response. Should a severe allergy episode emerge, the bracelet on the child would send alerts to its medicine applicator and the school staff via a smartphone app over WiFi. While the bracelet reassures the child that help is on the way, the app offers way-finding, step-by-step instructions, and a status report to the staff.

Aibi aims to bridge the exchange of information between school staff, medicine application know-how, and children to successfully stop severe allergies on its tracks.

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Student Honorable Mention

Know It All: The Easiest Way to Find Workshops in the Bay

Know It All: The Easiest Way to Find Workshops in the Bay

Know It All is the best way for active adults to find workshops and classes in the Bay Area.

Know It All is a mobile app that I conceived of and designed to take the frustration out of finding the best workshops and classes in the overwhelmingly abundant Bay Area. It’s designed to serve adults who want onsite, in-person classes, workshops, lectures and other recreational learning events.

I completed the entire product lifecycle from original idea inception to launch-ready visual/interaction design in 12 weeks, covering all steps of the UX and product design process: concept ideation, market research, competitive analysis, user research, personas, feature prioritization, feature release roadmap, information architecture, navigation, wireframes, visual design, usability testing, rapid iterations, and interactive prototyping. By connecting with users and diving deep into the research, I learned about their goals, needs and pain points, and I designed solutions to get the most relevant content in front of them, with the least amount of effort on their part as possible.

How it works: Know It All lets users search, browse or customize the app to their preferences, so they can find out when a class/workshop that they’d be interested in becomes available. Filters, favorites, to-do lists, and archived accomplishments help the user create a personalized curriculum for an exciting and engaging life of learning. Know It All utilizes the best features of hook/trigger design, passive search, and playful reminders to provide an experience that solves one of the most frustrating aspects of recreational learning: the hunt for meaningful information.

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Kat Vellos

JUDGES

Giles Colborne

Managing Director, CX Partners, Author & Frequent Speaker

Giles is author of Simple and Usable and a frequent speaker on the topics of simplicity and delight at UX conferences around the world. He began his career at British Aerospace, working on the usability of critical systems before creating some of the first commercial websites at Institute of Physics Publishing and creating groundbreaking experiences at Euro RSCG network. Today, he’s Managing Director and owner of CX Partners, one of the UK’s most respected UX consultancies working with clients around the world designing next-generation user interfaces. He’s also active in the UX community as a mentor and as 2013 co-chair of IA Summit.

Alex Cuthbert

Alex Cuthbert is the Director of User Experience at PicsArt, one of the most popular and highest rated photo editing mobile platforms with 200M+ installs and a vibrant global, social community of creatives. PicsArt represents the next wave of social engagement connecting users through creativity, collaboration, and discovery.

Previously, he lead UX design for Google Translate focusing on emerging markets, mobile communication, and instant translation. Before Google, Alex was head of user experience at Postini, which was acquired by Google in 2007 and became the anchor point for Google’s Enterprise Apps product line.

Alex received an A.B. in Computer Science and Spanish from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in Education, Mathematics, Science, & Technology from UC Berkeley where he was an NSF Fellow in Spatial Cognition (Cognitive Science) and post-doc research faculty at the Berkeley Institute of Design (BID). He leads workshops and speaks regularly on the connection between brand experiences, design, and innovation.

Location: San Francisco CA
Talk Title: The future of creativity and design: Collaboration and Co-creation

Katie Dill

Head of Experience Design, Airbnb

As the Head of Experience Design at Airbnb, Katie leads the designers defining Airbnb’s digital products and services.

Katie is helping the team craft high-quality experiences in the online and offline worlds. Katie joined Airbnb from Greenstart Venture Design where, as a Partner and Creative Director, she worked with early stage startups to design their user experience and brand strategy. Prior to Greenstart, as Creative Director at frog design, Katie led strategic, multidisciplinary design programs for companies including Intel, Disney, Samsung, Dolby and Chase Bank. Katie’s expertise includes interaction and industrial design, business strategy and user research.

Katie studied Industrial Design at Art Center College of Design and taught Interaction and Industrial Design at California College of Art’s graduate design program for three years.

Bill Flora

Founder, Tectonic; Former Design Director, Microsoft

After a 20-year career at Microsoft leading design efforts for Encarta Encyclopedia, Windows Media Center, Zune, Xbox, and establishing the Microsoft “Metro” Design Language, Bill took the show on the road and founded Tectonic, a user experience designfirm based in Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood.

Tectonic helps some of the word’s top brands envision next generation software experience; including Bang & Olufsen, Amazon, Microsoft, Beats Music, Sports Illustrated, Samsung, and many others. Bill and team work with clients to help define their user experience strategy and the unique expression of their brand through software.

Bill studied design at Art Center College of Design and currently teaches design at the University of Washington. Early in his career Bill judged design submissions for Communication Arts Magazine and won CA and IDSA awards for Encarta Encyclopedia, IDSA for Windows Media Center and recently IDSA Gold for Zune HD.

Jennifer Kilian

Vice President Digital, McKinsey; Former ECD Hot Studio

Jennifer Kilian recently joined McKinsey & Co. to build a global design team. Jennifer and her team provide impact to clients on design-led innovation engagements and digital strategy for business transformation, from the customer perspective.

Jennifer’s past creative leadership roles included Facebook, frog design, Apple and others. She has built global design teams in companies and design consultancies and directed successful initiatives for Apple, Disney, Chrysler, Sony, Cablevision, NASA, Samsung, HP, Johnson & Johnson, American Express, Microsoft and many other Fortune 500 companies, startups and non-profit organizations. She is a frequent speaker and lecturer in the design community globally.

She conducted her graduate work at New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program and holds an undergraduate degree in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Peter Merholz

Experience Design & Product Consultant, Cofounded Adaptive Path

Peter is a user experience and design executive with 20 years experience across a broad range of digital media. Currently, he is independent, figuring out his next move while co-authoring a book on building in-house design organizations.

In 2001, Peter co-founded Adaptive Path, perhaps the world’s premier firm dedicated to user experience. He was instrumental in AP’s growth from a small boutique firm to a renowned international consultancy. More recently, he led the global design team at Groupon, including product/UX, marketing, and brand design where he doubled the team from 30 to 60, and was instrumental in the first redesign of Groupon.com since the company launched.

Peter is also perhaps most (in)famous for coining the word “blog” in 1999. Really. In the OED and everything. Since then, he’s been blogging continuously at peterme.com.

Ian Worley

Ian is an award-winning digital innovation and design strategist with over 15 years of experience advising organisations on the value of design-led innovation and the creation of integrated, multi-channel customer relationships. A passionate innovator, Ian has lead high-performance, cross-disciplinary teams that have delivered ground-breaking digital products and services in industries spanning media and entertainment, mobile services, travel, e-commerce and finance.

As Global Head of User Experience and Design at Morgan Stanley, Ian leads a global team of talented design professionals developing next-generation client-facing and internal software, including Morgan Stanley Matrix, an award-winning product which continues to set new standards for interface design and customer experience in Financial Services.

Location: London UK
Talk Title: Creating breakthrough UX in a large organisation – observations from the front line

Jake Barton

Principal & Founder, Local Projects

Jake Barton is Principal and Founder of Local Projects, which uses architecture, technology and storytelling to create new engagement experiences. They have created landmark media design projects like the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the GE Healthymagination Launch, and Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Local Projects has won every top design award including the National Design Award, Clio and was named second of the top ten most innovative design firms by Fast Company Magazine for its redefinition of emotional storytelling. Local Projects work includes corporate innovation centers, public memorials, retail environments, libraries, and attractions. Clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eisenhower Memorial with Frank Gehry, StoryCorps, Target, Johnson & Johnson, AMNH, Tech Museum, and Microsoft.

Jake holds a Master’s Degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a BA from Northwestern.

Moderator & Host

Beverly May

Executive Director of the UX Awards, UX Teacher & Product Consultant

Beverly is the founder and Executive Director of the UX Awards. She has nearly 2 decades` experience in tech, product development and UX and has helped launch hundreds of new digital initiatives at digital agencies, tech incubators, startups, major publishers and in Peacekeeping at the UN. Beverly was until recently CTO & Head of Product and UX at a 40-person social video mixing software company in Berlin, Germany. Prior to that, she most recently taught UX at General Assembly and founded and led Oxford Tech, a boutique UX and product strategy consultancy in NY and San Francisco for the past 6 years. Over her career, Beverly has helped conceive, design and launch new digital initiatives for Wireless Generation/ Amplify Education, T-Mobile, Pitney Bowes, Hearst, Rodale, Diageo, Nike, MCI, Oxford University, RealAge, Weil Lifestyle, Schwab, Novartis, Goldman Sachs, AOL, Royal Bank and dozens of other brands and startups. She has also helped found several companies and founded and run a creative events production company and electronic music magazine in Toronto, CA.

Beverly has an Executive MBA from the University of Oxford, a Master`s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a BA from University of Toronto. She is a triple EU- Canadian- US citizen. She is also a regular public speaker and mentor on UX and product strategy for incubators and at UX events.

GUEST SPEAKERS

All guest speakers have directly supported or been involved in the 2015 UX Awards, either as winners, judges, advisory board members or supporters.

Angel Anderson

CEO & Co-Founder, NailSnaps

Angel Anderson is the CEO and Co-Founder founder of NailSnaps – the world’s best way to create, wear, and share nail art. Previously, as VP UX Director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Angel lead UX design on award-winning multi-channel customer experiences for clients such as Old Navy, Belkin, and Domino’s. She is a member of the CannesChimera having won a Cannes Lion Grand Prix for her work on American Express. At HUGE, Angel worked as a Senior Interactive Designer for Pepsi Refresh which won the inaugural Interaction Design Award. Her earlier work was recognized by the Smithsonian as a revolutionary approach to learning. Angel is committed to LA’s exploding UX and tech startup communities as a founding member of IxDA Los Angeles, WeAreLATech Experiences Club, and the Female Founders Los Angeles Alliance. She leads workshops and speaks regularly on fostering intelligent design and brand love, and evangelizing design as a means to advance business and customer goals.

Lennart Andersson

Director of Interaction Design, Design Strategist & Partner, Veryday

Lennart Andersson is Director of Interaction Design, Design Strategist and partner at Veryday, one of the world’s top-ranking design and innovation consultancies, with offices in Stockholm, New York, London, Dubai and Shanghai. Veryday has a strong commitment to people-driven innovation as a means to enhance quality of life. Based on deep people insights they create innovative solutions for products and services in the physical and digital world. In 2014 Veryday received the most prestigious honorary award by Red Dot: Design Team of the Year.

Lennart holds a master in Industrial Design and started his design career in 1999 by cofounding Peekaboo Design, to explore the convergence of digital and physical. His work included digital pens for Anoto, check-in systems for SAS, and Brainball; a brain controlled game, still after 15 years exhibited around the world.In parallel Lennart also worked as researcher and designer at the Interactive Institute, exploring interactivity, smart living and emotional communications.Lennart is a regular speaker at conferences, lectures at design programs and runs workshops and hackathons. Among his awards are iF awards Gold (miniMe), and Interactions Award for Optimization (Swegon).

Rachel Armstrong

Director, Research & Insight, WAE – We Are Experience

Rachel has a unique ability to unearth customer insights that transform strategic thinking. Working in a highly collaborative agile way, she pushes the boundaries to rapidly develop breakthrough solutions for WAE’s global clients. She has worked client-side and in consultancy for the past 12 years gathering a wealth of knowledge on UX best practice with clients including HSBC, Transport for London (TfL), Zurich, BT, Unilever, Barclays, the Metropolitan Police and British Gas.

Prior to joining WAE Rachel worked with Samsung Design Europe as UX Research Manager leading insight for Europe and Asia, and for Kinneir Dufort where she worked with various well-known household brands such as Nestle. A specialist in qualitative research, Rachel has extensive experience to create and deploy new initiatives and methodologies that connect with consumers on all levels and on a diverse range of project typologies. She passionately believes that the foundation to create great ideas, and future proofed product and services, is to study and understand human behavior.

Amos Bloomberg

As a professor who practices what he preaches, Amos has over 20 years’ experience building things, both practical and whimsical. His most rewarding professional validation to date was standing on a crowded NYC subway surreptitiously looking down at a seated passenger reading a Metro newspaper article about himself and his work. That happened only once, though Amos has been responsible for the strategy and design of dozens of popular apps, websites, and advertising campaigns on behalf of a wide range of clients, from the UN to Facebook and Microsoft, from Amex to Juicy Couture, from MTV to Amazon, and on to small tech startups whose names are rightly forgotten to history. His own award-winning non-commercial work has been featured in Forbes, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Wired, etc, etc.

Amos holds a Master’s from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a Bachelor’s in Brain & Cognitive Sciences from the University of Rochester.

Location: New York NY
Talk Title: Simple is Hard: Creating UX for Users Who Don’t Care if You’re Smart
Submission: Moving Through Glass

Jina Bolton

Senior Designer on the Lightning Design System team, Salesforce

Jina Bolton is a Senior Designer on the Lightning Design System team at Salesforce. She is passionate about style guides, Sass, and whisky. She organizes The Mixin, a San Francisco Sass & front end meet up, and she also leads the brand & website design for Sass.

Séamus Byrne

Director of UX, Graphic Mint

Séamus is a passionate User Experience Design thought leader and international speaker. He has been creating innovative, meaningful experiences with digital products for over 15 years. He initiated the successful bid to host Interaction12 in Dublin, which he co-chaired and is proud to have been a driving force behind Ireland’s emergence to the global design scene. He served on the Board of Directors for the IxDA from 2011-2014, as the Director of Global Events. This role lead him to become an essential figure in bringing the IxDA’s Interaction conferences to Toronto, Amsterdam and San Francisco.

Séamus and fellow co-founder Julian Becerra run the Graphic Mint design and innovation agency, borne from their creative collaboration while living in San Francisco, 2004. The agency are now experts in all aspects of digital product design and testing. From user experience to service design, Graphic Mint’s innovative team are always creating meaningful experiences between people, processes and technology. He graduated with an MA in Multimedia from California State University and a BA in Sociology and Greek & Roman Civilisations from St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

David Carroll

Associate Professor of Media Design, Parsons School of Design

As Associate Professor of Media Design, and former director of the MFA Design and Technology graduate program at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City (2010-2013), David Carroll’s teaching and research explores how an art and design studio practice intersects with new technologies, evolving media ecologies, the media industry, public policy, education and pedagogy. NYC Media Lab, Pearson Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and Nokia Research Center have funded his research. Prior to his academic career, he served industry clients including AOL, A&E, CNN, ESPN, FOX, HBO, PBS, Random House, Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, Sony, Time Inc., Warner Bros and others. Professor Carroll earned his MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design in 2000 and his BA in Art History and Religion from Bowdoin College in 1997.

Location: New York NY
Talk Title: Adblocking as the Biggest Boycott in History: How Big Data and UX failed massively and how to fix it.

Tomer (Tommy) Dikerman

Co-founder, Chief Product Officer & UX, Comeet

A passionate innovator and avid fan of design and technology mashups, Tomer has proven that remarkable UX can propel a young company above a crowded and traditional enterprise software category. As the head of product, he ensures that Comeet’s collaborative recruiting platform creates high engagement for both power and infrequent users.

Prior to founding Comeet, he built and led companies that transformed innovative concepts into hardware devices and interactive experiences for homeland security, consumer mobile apps, and B2B SaaS. Tomer holds a BA in Architecture from Tel-Aviv University.

Erin Disselhorst

Product Manager, Work & Co

Erin Disselhorst is well-versed in software development and creating user-centric experiences across platforms. At Work & Co, Erin has been the primary product manager on cross-platform design projects for Showtime Anytime, SourceMedia, and the Metropolitan Opera. Previously, Erin was a Producer at Arkadium, where she helped transition the company from a traditional waterfall management approach to agile and scrum methodologies. During this time, she served as the product owner for a range of games for browser, desktop and mobile platforms.

Graham Ericksen

Chief Strategy Office, Modus

Graham is a digital strategist and user experience expert with over 18 years of experience advising leading organizations on how to simplify their products and processes to make them more accessible, compelling, and profitable. Prior to joining Modus, where he is the Chief Strategy Officer, Graham was the Creative Director of Content and IA at Sullivan, where he developed award-winning work for Schwab, MetLife, Fidelity, Ameriprise, and Disney. He was also the Director of Customer Experience at JP Morgan Chase, and Senior Information Architect and Writer at Siegel & Gale.

Graham writes and lectures extensively. He teaches a seminar entitled “Write Gooder” to students and communications professionals, and his articles have appeared in many publications, including Booz Allen’s Strategy and Business.

Alex Faaborg

Staff Designer, Google

Alex Faaborg is on the Virtual Reality design team at Google. He has led the design of Android Wear, Google Now, and the Android OS on the Nexus 5. Prior to joining Google, Alex served at Mozilla as the principal designer on Firefox for five years. Alex has a masters degree from the MIT Media Lab where he researched artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, and context aware computing. Alex’s interactive design work is based on fundamentals of human cognition and perception, from his background in Cognitive Science and Information Science at Cornell University.

Daniel Galán

Interaction Design Recent Graduate, University of Washington

Daniel graduated from the interaction design program at the University of Washington in 2015 and is currently looking for the dream job. He became interested in design while growing up surrounded by graphic arts and crafts in Oaxaca, Mexico. In design school, he also had the opportunity to hone industrial and graphic design skills which have helped him have a more solid vision of his design concepts. Daniel is a advocate for social design, so he is concerned with producing great design that positively reaches and helps everyone in the world. His ideal job would be to use design to bring the benefits of science and technology to those who need it most. He is proficient in English, Spanish, and professional photography.

Aleks Gryczon

Associate Design Director, Work & Co

Aleks Gryczon is responsible for the creative direction and execution of client initiatives at Work & Co. She collaborates closely with her teams to develop concepts with simple and intuitive usability, and has served as the lead creative on projects for Adult Swim, Aeromexico, McKinsey & Company, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Smithsonian Channel. Prior to joining Work & Co, Aleks was Senior Designer at Frog, where she helped brand and create new experiences for General Electric, Comcast, and Al Jazeera. Aleks graduated from Pratt Institute.

Tom Harding

Director of Product Design, Made by Many

Tom helps organizations conceive, research, design and launch digital products. For over 14 years, Tom has worked with startups, corporations, and not-for-profits in the fields of education, news, music, art, politics, government, finance, transportation, sports, retail, entertainment, and healthcare. Tom is fascinated with the systems and process around the things we make. At Made by Many, Tom is responsible for leading and supporting the design team through learn, make, test cycles that include customer research, prototyping, workshops, interaction design, brand experiences, and business strategy. Tom created the first internship program at Made by Many and mentored the interns that first spawned Kickstarter success, Hackaball. Tom has a BA in Interaction Design and Digital Arts from London Collage of Music and Media.

Joe Jacobellis

Director of Digital Media, Hospital Corp. of America IT&S

While in college I worked for the Walt Disney Company in guest relations and parade audience control. During the dot com boom I moved to Nashville, TN with my fiancé Kaci and started working at a startup – ehc.com which was funded by HCA – Hospital Corporation of America. For 15 years I have worn many hats from marketing, communications, patient portals, digital media, motion graphics, film, larger venue production, consumer facing applications, mobile apps, and overall digital media ventures in healthcare. Currently I oversee a highly talented cross functional UX team that delivers MyHealthOne – the consumer/patient portal, mobile native & web experiences, and over 900+ healthcare websites.

When not delivering user centered experiences, my wife and I produce children’s theater & choir performances for World Outreach Church with a group of 200 kids. We lead the creative direction, drama, set design, script writing and choreography for performances to delight the weekly attendance of ~10,000 people and and major performances held at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

Location: Nashville TN
Talk Title: Emerging trends in experience design and their impact on the now.

Andy Knight

Head of User Experience Design, TIAA-CREF

Andy Knight has been designing online experiences since 14.4k modems hissed greetings at each other. He has Forrest Gumped his way through the history of the internet, consistently finding himself in the right place of the right time to work on dozens of innovative products in the financial services, publishing, and retail industries.

Andy joined TIAA-CREF’s User Experience Design team in 2012, and took over as Head of UX Design in 2013. Since then, the group has expanded by more than 50% and grown significantly in its scope and influence. Prior to joining TIAA-CREF, he co-founded and served as chief product officer of innovative stress-management startup meQuilibrium. Before meQuilibrium, he spent 9 years with Fidelity Investments, where he lead the design efforts for Fidelity’s financial planning, equity research, trading, and human resources outsourcing programs.

Location: Boston MA
Talk Title: Emerging trends in experience design and their impact on the now.

Feliphe Lavor

Experience Director, Huge

Feliphe Lavor joins Huge as Experience Director in Brooklyn. Originally from Brazil, Feliphe has worked across multiple departments at Huge’s office in Rio, including interaction design, strategy, and user experience, trying to find the sweet spot between engineering and design for clients. He has led projects for global companies such as Google, Coke, Discovery Networks, Universal Music and Estadão. Prior to joining Huge, Feliphe was a business consultant, and has lived and worked in India, the UK, Latin America, and the United States. Feliphe earned a B.Eng. in Industrial Engineering from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, a Post-Graduate degree in Cognitive Ergonomics from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and an MBA from IBMEC in Brazil.

Todd Lefelt

Managing Director of User Experience, Huge

Todd Lefelt is Managing Director of User Experience at Huge in Los Angeles. Since joining Huge in 2006, Todd has been instrumental in building the agency’s user experience team and helping to define the philosophy and process applied to user-centric design. In 2010, Todd joined Huge’s Los Angeles office, where he has played a key role in the development of the company’s West Coast presence. Todd has directed interactive design and research for some of Huge’s largest engagements and has worked with clients including Clear Channel, National Geographic, NBC Universal, Samsung, Toyota and Warner Music Group. With nearly two decades of industry experience, Todd held senior positions at a number of other companies prior to joining Huge, including Time Inc. Interactive, Ecos Technologies, Pathways Flandrau Science Center, Wave Technologies, Kozmo.com, R/GA and Ultra 16. Todd received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MA from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He currently lives in Silver Lake with his wife Holly, son Ira, and cat Pippa.

Anna Lewandowski

Senior UX Designer, SAP

Creating innovative, usable, useful and beautiful designs is my passion. I believe great User Experience can change how users see and interact with things.
I’m Anna Lewandowski and I’m a User Experience Designer at SAP d.studio. My background is in computer sciences; human computer interaction and print media design. I worked as a researcher for 2 years and as an interaction designer for 6 years. I love to foster you talents and support the community.

David Lipkin

Principal, Method

David has over 20 years of experience solving business problems with design solutions. As one of the founders of Method, he has led the development and growth of the New York office, where he currently leads strategy and business development efforts. David founded Method with the desire to be part of a design firm that focused on positive business outcomes, smart cross-platform solutions, and an always improving culture. His clients value his experience, insight, and candor. Some of them include Comcast, IBM, MoMA, PBS, Rogers Communications, The TED Conferences, Time Warner Cable, Steelcase, and Viggle.

Prior to Method, David was Director of Technology at MetaDesign. Within the role of Director of Technology, David was key in establishing and building MetaDesign’s transformation from a print-oriented studio to one that created brand-oriented multimedia, Internet-based, and application-based products. David has a B.A from Reed College, where he majored in history with a sub-focus in anthropology. David finds work a relaxing break from the freneticism of his two little girls and ongoing renovation of his 1870s Brooklyn Brownstone.

Natasha Lloyd

Senior UX Designer, SAP

Natasha is a senior UX designer at SAP and is current the UX lead for BILT. With a background in interaction design, user research, and development, Natasha has worked on a wide range of projects – from enterprise software (including Strategic Workforce Planning and Profit & Loss Analysis) to award-winning consumer facing applications (SAP Scouting and BILT). Prior to SAP, she worked at Inxight Software on text analysis products and at Business Objects on the dashboard design tool Xcelsius. She holds an MS degree in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she focused on information visualization. She has a passion for designing the best experiences that solve meaningful problems. She currently lives in Ashland, MA with her husband Nick and 5-year-old son Noah, who thinks all tickets to amusement parks should be free because “they’re just made of paper!”

Daniel Nacamuli

Interaction Design Lead, Method

Daniel has worked for the past ten years in digital design in London, Brussels, Paris and Tokyo. As a hands-on interaction designer, Daniel helped shape the prototyping vision for Method’s London and San Francisco studios. His process includes creating on-screen and physical tools to control the feel of user interfaces. On the more experiential end of the spectrum, he prototypes digital services to inform the design team’s ethnographic research.

Prior to joining Method he was involved in the strategy, concepting, design and development of projects that include connected devices, communication tools for L’Oréal’s upper management, and an online home for the think tank of Japan’s second largest advertising agency, Hakuhodo.

Laurent Nguyen

Visual Designer, SAP

I’m a maker with passion for art, technology and education. Everyday, I craft delightful experiences that make people’s lives easier. I love to push for new standard in design and visual language. I believe that an innovative design mindset allows us to see possibilities in the simplest things. From there, we can solve fundamental problems that impact work and life of people around us. I started as a fine artist, then found my way to traditional graphic design and now experience design. Aside all these above, I’m tinkering with data visualization to discover insights and patterns of new social trends.

Prior to SAP, I was an independent designer who involved in a wide range of design works including visual product system, brand strategy, identity, user experience to illustration for SF AIGA, early-stage start ups, and enterprise.

Zachary Orr

iOS Engineer, MailChimp

Zachary Orr is an iOS engineer on MailChimp’s Mobile Product team, where he’s worked on mobile-exclusive projects like MailChimp Snap and MailChimp Subscribe. A longtime developer of apps related to robotics competitions, he’s currently building an iOS data reporting app for them. In 2014, Zachary helped develop the iOS app for Arabic music streaming service Anghami. Zachary briefly attended Western Michigan University.

Cliff Sexton

Director of Enterprise User Experience, Home Depot

Cliff is a builder of high performing multi-discipline user experience teams spanning e-Commerce, B2B & B2C companies. He has a deep passion for creating UX teams and introducing user-centered design principals into companies that traditionally have not invested in user experience. He has over 16 years experience designing software products in collaboration with business and technology partners that maximum business value and delight users.

Location: Atlanta GA
Talk Title: Emerging trends in experience design and their impact on the now.

Lauren Shapiro

Lead Designer, Work & Co

Lauren Shapirohelps lead product design at Work & Co through concepting, design, prototyping, testing, and iteration. She’s provided design leadership across engagements for Aeromexico, the Metropolitan Opera, the Smithsonian Channel, and The Week. She joined Work & Co from AKQA, where she served as the UX lead on multiple mobile, responsive, and retail projects for clients such as Verizon Wireless and Olympus Cameras. Lauren holds a degree from Rochester Institute of Technology in New Media Design and Imaging.

Jennifer Speciale

Global Talent Acquisition, McKinsey Digital Labs

Jennifer Speciale is responsible for Experience Design recruiting within McKinsey & Co’s new group, McKinsey Digital Labs. Officially founded in November 2014, Experience Design has grown to 42 global hires – half of which are women! Specializing in start-up ventures, Jennifer’s passion is realized in all-things Design, with a particular industry focus on women within experience design. Building a new capability within an established, prestigious organization like McKinsey is the ultimate opportunity for empathy and fostering an understanding to unite both worlds. Previously, Jennifer recruited for Fjord Design throughout the acquisition by Accenture and helped in that transition. In addition to her penchant for languages (Italian, Spanish, Hindi) Jennifer holds a Master’s degree in International Relations, another in International Business, an undergraduate degree in Neural Science and four published articles in the Journal of Neural Transmission.

Michael Sueoka

Head of User Experience, The Mobile Majority

Michael is Head of User Experience at The Mobile Majority, a fully end-to-end mobile advertising platform that houses every component needed to run a successful mobile campaign from start to finish, having served over 517 million interactive ads to date.

Previously, Michael founded and advised several companies in the tech startup world. He has experience working on projects from the smallest mobile apps to some of the most popular apps in the iTunes store. His speciality is in User-Centered Design, and he has helped companies like Grindr, Honda, EXOS, MC & Saatchi, Daily Associates, DivX, and Entertainment Arts. He has also helped instruct UX classes at UCLA and Long Beach State.Michael received his BA from UC Irvine.

Tim Thianthai

Strategic Design Consultant, SAP

Tim Thianthai works as a Strategic Design Consultant at SAP’s Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC), an award-winning global design team that provides end-to-end design and innovation services backed by SAP technologies. This year, Tim has worked with multiple clients such as Nestlé, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and Exxon Mobil. Through education and years of experience in the UX field, Tim believes firmly that the ability to listen, observe, and adapt to changes are key to success.

Tim holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Transdisciplinary Design from California College of the Arts and a BA in Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kat Vellos

UX/UI Designer, Viv Labs

Kat Vellos is an interdisciplinary design thinker. Her background is rich in Visual Design, Education and Facilitation which gives her a unique approach to user experience design, program design, and human-centered empathy-driven solutions. Most recently she’s been working with the team who created Siri on their new project, Viv, an AI-driven digital personal assistant. In her free time, she’s the founder and facilitator of the Bay Area Black Designers meetup group, fostering greater community and advocating for greater diversity in technology and design careers. And when she’s not doing that, you can find her wheeling around the roller disco.

Matthew Weber

Matthew Weber is an award winning UX designer, executive and teacher at NYU, who has had his work showcased by Apple and has lectured at NASA. He has a passion for making data easy to use. He has worked on projects for Thompson Reuters, CNN, Lincoln Financial, Morgan Stanley, Sesame Street, MeeGenius, Johnson Research Labs, and Persado. He is currently VP of UX and Design at Zoomdata.

In addition to teaching UX Portfolio at NYU, Matthew is a founding member of the UX Curriculum Advisory Board at NYU, and is the founder of the UX + Data Meetup in New York. Matthew has also been invited to speak at Singularity University at the NASA campus on how to build massively-parallel problem solving systems, and to the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Matthew lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children, and in his spare time, has been building an aqueduct in his backyard.

Scott Wilkinson

Creative user experience, strategy and technology leader with 16 years experience and a passion for innovative technologies. Demonstrated success in applying a holistic approach to user-centered design and developing strategic roadmaps for digital experiences. Experienced manager, adept at building teams that specialize in both strategic and production design. Has managed both in-house teams as well as numerous engagements with top digital and interactive agencies.

Location: Philadelphia PA
Talk Title: Emerging trends in experience design and their impact on the now.

Dana Wilson

Vice President, Customer Experience, Process Improvement, Comcast

A results driven leader with proven talent for proactively identifying and executing enterprise/operational process improvement initiatives. Strong team builder known for her ability to creatively influence and promote organizational change at various levels. Experience utilizing her transferable skill set in the specialty chemical, energy, government, and interactive technology industries .

Location: Philadelphia PA
Talk Title: Emerging trends in experience design and their impact on the now.

KC Wolff-Ingham

Senior Director UX, Sparks Grove

KC’S background is as a cross-functional team leader for product, UX, design and software development in the interactive media, entertainment and broadcast media industries. He has experience in both startups and the corporate world (B-to-C, B-to-B and R&D). He holds an MSc in Human-Centered Computing-Systems (HCI) from the University of Sussex and has led software projects across many platforms and technologies, including Smart TVs, mobile, tablet, 2-screen, web and advanced advertising.

Sparks Grove

Sparks Grove crafts and delivers meaningful human experiences that cultivate growth for our clients’ businesses and new value for their customers. We’re a diverse team of industry experts, CX and UX practitioners, brand strategists, designers, tech gurus, writers, social media analysts and conceptual thinkers. We’re also a division of North Highland, a global management consulting firm that delivers big ideas and strategic business capabilities to clients around the world.

Gold Sponsors

Parsons School of Design

Rigorous practice and critical scholarship prepare students to become leading agents of commentary and change. The School of Art, Media, and Technology offers superb training in the art and design disciplines, expanding these fields beyond their traditional boundaries through interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange.

Silver Sponsors

General Assembly

At General Assembly, we are creating a global community of individuals empowered to pursue work they love, by offering full-time immersive programs, long-form courses, and classes and workshops on the most relevant skills of the 21st century – from web development and user experience design, to business fundamentals, to data science, to product management and digital marketing.

Huge

Modus Associates

Modus Associates is a digital innovation consultancy founded to help global brands and visionary start-ups more fully realize the business potential of the digital age, where customers rule, connectivity is everywhere, and creating value for profit and social impact is the name of the game.

SAP

Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with locations in more than 130 countries, SAP AG is the world leader in enterprise software and software-related services. Explore our 42 year history of innovation and access late breaking company news, financial and investor information, career opportunities, and more.

Zoomdata

Bronze Sponsors

Hired Guns

We’ve built The Hired Guns to help the digital creative class expand their potential far beyond the 9-to-5, bringing their expertise to companies in unexpected and exciting ways and guiding their careers through transitions from freelance gigs to fulltime jobs and back again.

The Joanne Weaver Group

We are a NYC-based UX/UI Design recruitment firm, making meaningful connections within the UX community since 2007. We’re a little bit of Kirk *and* Spock: we care deeply about the people we help, and we’re also thorough and deeply knowledgeable about the UX industry. We’re Joanne Weaver (President) and Rebecca Levi (Recruiting Manager), and we wanna meet you!

Loop 11

Loop11 is the only way to get quantitative usability metrics…affordably. It’s the SurveyMonkey of usability testing. A self-serve, browser-based solution for usability professionals, web managers and web designers to create their own online, usability testing projects to get the metrics needed to optimize website usability.

Partners

ACM New York City Meetup

ACM New York City is a non-profit professional group that meets regularly to discuss diverse topics in computer science such as user experience, user research, data visualization, predictive analytics, applied machine learning, statistical modeling, open data, and artificial neural networks. Meeting topics are varied and range from tutorials on basic concepts and their applications, to success stories from local practitioners and academic students, to discussions of tools, new technologies, and best practices. All are welcome to attend, to meet others, and to present their work.

Berlin School of Creative Leadership

The mission of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership at Steinbeis University Berlin is to become the world’s leading institute for quality executive education, leadership programs and research into creative leadership.

By bringing together top creatives and international leadership experts, the Berlin School will pave the way for new standards in communication and leadership, fostering global discourse on creative leadership in media, entertainment, advertising, design, journalism, and marketing.

EVENTBROWSE

Gary’s Guide

GarysGuide is a global resource and community of professionals that are interested in startups, entrepreneurship, social media and technology. It is one of the best resources for discovering technology and startup related events, classes, workshops and jobs in New York City, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, London, Boston, Los Angeles, Austin and other cities.

Harvest

Harvest is a simple but powerful web-based time tracking and invoicing application. We are dedicated to helping creative professionals work better. Today, Harvest is relied on by innovative businesses around the world, including Happy Cog and Adaptive Path, to track time and invoice clients.

Human Factors International

Human Factors International (HFI) is the world’s largest company specializing in user experience (UX) design. Our focus is unique in helping clients develop mature and effective UX practices. We provide a complete and seamless suite of advisory, training, certification, methods, standards, and tools to help you institutionalize user (customer) centricity. Our design projects ensure an unbroken golden thread, from executive intent, through digital strategy and innovation, to structural and detailed design and validation, including metrics-based improvements. Beyond ensuring that users can efficiently use your offerings, we apply persuasive engineering methods to influence your customers to use digital channels, engage, and convert.

Idea to IPO

Idea to IPO is one of the largest and most active member organizations in Silicon Valley focusing on tech and entrepreneurship.

Our mission is to promote entrepreneurship, support entrepreneurs, build community, and provide value to the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem.

We partner with venture capital firms, angel investor groups,law firms, co-working spaces, startup incubators and accelerators, colleges and universities, and other entrepreneur member organizations in our mission to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals and realize their aspirations.

Igniters

Igniters is a strong community of entrepreneurs and founders in Silicon Valley who have the burning desire to grow their company. We bring in influential speakers to give startup tips, and offer great opportunities for networking. Our events are also available to Igniters around the globe via live streaming.

Institute of Design – Illinois Institute of Technology

IIT Institute of Design (ID) is the largest graduate design school in the US and specializes in research and strategy. ID faculty and students tackle complex issues like the future of reading, learning in the digital age, and tech-savvy, patient-centric healthcare. They develop methodology in emerging fields like urbanism, interactive place-making, quantified self, and design for social good. Some of this work is featured at ID’s annual conferences: the Strategy Conference and Design Research Conference. ID offers an MDes for candidates with or without design backgrounds, a dual MDes/MBA, a PhD, and a part-time, weekend-only MDM for professionals with eight years of leadership experience, and weeklong design camps.

IxDA Berlin

Since 2008 IxDA Berlin is gathering interaction designers and all interested friends and fellows to talk about the emerging questions of todays interactive design space. At our regular meetings we are happy to welcome well known international speakers as well as hosting discussions and talks by the protagonists of Berlin’s own fast growing Interaction Design community. With members coming from all corners of the industry we never leave out an opportunity to broaden our horizon beyond the established design topics.

IxDA Boston

The Boston IxDA local group organizes workshops for people interested in interaction design. Our events gather together a vibrant community of professionals who design interactive systems, services and products of all kinds: web, desktop, enterprise, mobile, consumer electronics, digitally-enhanced environments, and more. Our programming is created by a passionate group of local leader volunteers and focuses on practicing what we preach. While our events cater to the interaction design community, all are welcome.

IxDA Chicago

The Chicago area chapter of the global Interaction Design Association (IxDA) exists to bring together local area designers in all disciplines that overlap with interaction design, whether it be product, digital, space, research, or even business, that strive to create user-centered design solutions. This organization is volunteer-driven and always looking for sponsorship or hosts for upcoming events.

IxDA Colorado

We’re a professional group for Interaction Design, with forays into User Experience Design and related fields. All are welcome, whether you have years of experience or are just curious about making technology better for people.

IxDA New York City

The IxDA New York City local group organizes monthly presentations and workshops for people interested in interaction design. Our events gather together a vibrant community of professionals who design interactive systems, services and products of all kinds: web, desktop, enterprise, mobile, consumer electronics, digitally-enhanced environments, and more.

IxDA San Francisco

IxDA San Francisco is the SF local group of the Interaction Design Association. The IxDA is a member-supported organization committed to serving the needs of the international interaction design community.

IxDA Taiwan

With no fees for membership, IxDA relies on its passionate members and partners to help serve the needs of the international Interaction Design community. With more than 70,000 members and over 170 local groups around the world, the IxDA network actively focuses on interaction design issues for the practitioner, no matter their level of experience.

LA – UX Meetup

Los Angeles is home to one of the largest volunteer-run User Experience (UX) professional development organization in the world. The Los Angeles User Experience Meetup has more than 3,000 members. Since the organization was founded on April 21, 2007 by Lynn Boyden, Chris Chandler, Craig Nakano and Weston Thompson, over 50 events have been held for User Experience Designers, Information Architects, Interaction Designers, UX Researchers, Usability Analysts and Engineers and others interested in UX-related topics.

NYC – CHI

NYC – CHI holds UX-focused events and has an active mailing list to service the NYC region. We have over 1900 active members in all aspects of HCI, including information architects, interaction designers, user experience designers, service designers, product and museum experience designers, usability practitioners, digital librarians, user interface designers and UI developers.

NYU – ITP

ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people’s lives. Perhaps the best way to describe us is as a Center for the Recently Possible.

NYU – SCPS

For nearly 80 years, the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS) has provided comprehensive, professionally oriented educational experiences to students from the New York metropolitan area, across the country, and around the globe.

NYC UXPA

We seek to bring together professionals from the marketing, design, technology and research communities so that we may share our collective experiences and create a forum for learning and professional growth. We encourage you to join us at our monthly events, which are open to members and non-members.

Rutgers

SoDA

SoDA is the primary multinational organization focused solely on leading and representing top digital agencies and elite production companies through unparalleled collaboration, knowledge-sharing, business support and exploration of how technology can be leveraged to transform consumer experiences.

Tech Crunch

TechCrunch is a blog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, TechCrunch profiles existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.

Ultra Light Startups

Ultra Light Startups is an online and in-person community for technology entrepreneurs. Events feature startup pitches, networking and interactive, moderated panel discussions with leading industry experts. Topics cover: design, technology, marketing and finance. Attend and participate in-person in New York, Boston and Toronto, or view the live video stream from anywhere.

UX Acrobatics

NYC UX Acrobatics is a community based UX Meetup. NYC UX Acrobatics primary focus is the varied facets of UX design, research and usability. Our aim is to create monthly ‘UX themed’ workshop style meetings where members work with each other learning, discovering and networking on all things UX.

UX Hero Comics

UX Mastery

UX Mastery is an online resource for aspiring user experience designers. Through our free articles, ebooks, in-person workshops, community projects, and a vibrant community of eager volunteers, we’ve helped thousands of people get started in UX and get better.

UXPA-Boston

The Boston Chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association is a highly active community for persons with individual and professional interests in usability, user experience design, and their many related fields. UXPA Boston is a regional chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA).

UXPA-DC

The DC chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association is a highly active local community of individuals interested in usability, user experience design, interaction design, and their many related fields.

Validately

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The mission of the Industrial Design Program is to provide students with the intellectual and physical skills to assume leadership positions in the world of industrial design. The program addresses the interaction of people with objects and their environment addressing the cultural, technological, business, ergonomic, ecological and social factors that lead to more useful and meaningful products and services. In 2013, the Sophomore Team took the Silver Prize for the Best Accessibility Innovation at the UX Awards, for their project, Activ.

Women Who Code

Women Who Code is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers by creating a global, connected community of women in technology. Our community provides an avenue for women to pursue a career in technology, helps them gain new skills and hone existing skills for professional advancement, and fosters environments where networking and mentorship are valued.

National Partners

MIT Enterprise Forum

The MIT Enterprise Forum is dedicated to strengthening technology clusters globally so that the innovation economy can grow and bring new and interesting technologies and innovation into the marketplace. The MIT Enterprise Forum is the preeminent organization of entrepreneurs in the global innovation economy.